Dust at Dawn
by Ericai
Summary: To Elizabeth Wheaton, vampires were something she read about in books until her 18th summer. Soon she will figure out the role the people around her play in this new mystical world.
1. Default Chapter

May 28 of 1896  
  
My name is Elizabeth Wheaton of the wealthy Wheatons of Morristown. Morristown is located just south of Oxfordshire where my brother, Andrew who is 22 and is tall and thin with brown hair and distinguishing features, attends Jordan College. I have red hair like my mother, Allison Wheaton, who disappeared mysteriously when I was 8. Just hours after giving birth to my younger sister, Sara, who looks just like Mother with her deep brown eyes and smooth fair skin, who is presently 9 but will become 10 on September 15th a day that my father is not quite looking forward to because that will be the 10th anniversary of Mother's disappearance but he still must be pleasant for the sake of poor Sara who never knew Mother. She just woke up in the middle of the night left and never came she often took strolls at night but I didn't expect to take a walk after just giving birth but Andrew who was 16 then said she walked after she gave birth to me but she never returned. They searched all over town but they couldn't find anything not a strand of her fiery red hair or a drop of her fiery red blood. But I digress back to the true purpose of this entry. I also have piercing blue-green eyes much like my father, George Wheaton and I am only just 18 and quite tall for my age. I am relatively intelligent and want to be a scholar like Andrew but my father will not allow his eldest daughter to be a spinster librarian. I loved all literature since I was 6 years old but mostly I adore stories with mystical and sometimes dangerous events like fairies and witches good or bad but frequently I've been reading about vampires, demons, goblins and such. Oh, how I wish to be a damsel in distress in a great novel where a handsome man will save me and I will fall madly in love with my rescuer. It was my mother who read me The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allen Poe and got me interested in stories like that, however, I am quite sorry to report that I am marrying a man I do not love, for my father's sake no less, and I know that Sir Jonathan Lexington is only concerned with that fact that I am ready and able to produce heirs to his fortune and wouldn't rescue me if a cluster of evil demons were attacking me. It all started when I first began mentioning that I wanted to go to college then Father started choosing and eliminating suitors for me, this was 2 years ago and I haven't gotten a moments rest since. Also, I have one true friend Lanie Jennerson, she is 18 as well but looks nothing like me she is short and very curvy, has blond hair and pale blue eyes. She is the kind of girl who wants only a secure future but I want more. Her father got rich quite by accident when his uncle got killed in a train robbery in London, Lanie was brought up by, what my father calls, "street urchins," she has a seriously peculiar foul-mouth and would often spill her coffee and shout "Goddamn it!" at the top of her lungs meanwhile I only drink tea and if I ever spilled any, which would be completely unlikely because I went to finishing school and have been told that I have the grace of a swan, I would probably say in the most kindly of voices "Beg your pardon, I am so clumsy." Despite the fact that Lanie is my closest companion we are very different. Occasionally I see a "street urchin" and I wonder what would it be like to get out of these corsets and wear nothing but a flannel blouse and trousers like Lanie used to wear. Then she tells me how horrible it is to be poor and unloved by the masses and treated as an outcast but I think how she could be right when it looks so real and true to be unfortunate and not having to put on a show for people who don't identify with you. Lanie would be more than happy to marry Jonathan but I crave adventure and danger beyond imagination. Sometimes I have odd dreams about making love to an gorgeous man and I know its not Jonathan because he is far from attractive but then, in my dream the man grows fangs and bites me in the neck and when I told Lanie she asked me if I woke up in a cold sweat, screaming but I didn't. I felt excitement and a bit of pleasurable pain but not fear and when I finally awake from my dream I shut the drapes and want to go back into my sinful slumber. She told me that I need nothing more but a "good roll in the hay" whatever that means. Even though my brother, my father, and my best friend all love me I believe that only Sara truly understands me. When I told her my dream, conveniently leaving out the sexual parts considering her young age, she told me that I was living one of my books and pleasure I felt was just pure exhilaration of not knowing what would come next. Her wise behavior scares me sometimes. Andrew first questioned my virginity and then didn't once look me in the eye that day. After Andrew's reaction I wasn't about to tell Father. Father thinks I should stop being such a crazy loon with her snout in a book and get my priorities back in order. Priorities! Priorities! Priorities! That is all that man ever thinks about. I want to be swept up in passion and never let down. I hope one day that happens to me and it just might with a little faith and just a splash of luck. 


	2. Chapter 1

Chapter 1  
  
"I had that dream again," said Elizabeth in a pink summer dress sitting on the veranda over-looking The Butterfly Garden drinking tea with Lanie who was wearing a beautiful and elegant yellow dress.  
"The one with the fanged man. I thought you said it stopped," said Lanie with a concerned expression she almost never gets.  
They were watching Sara play in the garden by herself whistling with the bluebirds and robins. She picked 3 daisies and put one in her wavy red hair then walked up to the veranda.  
"It did, for a fortnight, then it appeared again last night," explained Elizabeth sipping her tea ever so carefully. "Now, shush, Sara needn't know about my delusions."  
"A flower for my sister and one for my sister's dearest friend," Sara placed a flower in Elizabeth's bun and one in Lanie's blonde braid. "Are we talking about my sister's vampire dreams?" Lanie shot Elizabeth with a look that said how could you shush me when you all ready told her.  
"I guess Elizabeth has also informed you of the immorality of these visions, yes?" asked Lanie with a sure stare on her face directing at Elizabeth.  
"No," responded Sara "What do you mean, do you mean that my virgin sister has sexual dreams." "How scandalous!" Elizabeth looked shocked for a moment at Lanie for telling such things to her baby sister, who also look surprised. Then she realized why.  
"Sara, when did you learn words and phrases like that, you are only just 9." Exclaimed Elizabeth who had a curious and astonished appearance.  
"Not true, I am almost 10 and have read many of your books including the Duchess' Scandal." Said Sara in alarm of her sister's underestimation of her. Just when Elizabeth was going to protest at her sister's disregard to her belongings, her fiancé, Sir Edward Lexington, walked onto the veranda and first smiled peacefully at Elizabeth then looked a little unsure by the shock on her face by her sister's statement.  
"Hello, darling," said Sir Edward unaware that Elizabeth now looked guilty for her discussion of her dreams with her adolescent sister. Sir Edward Lexington dressed in a white suit and had a long, thin black mustache. He had black hair that never moved and was simply tacky. There is no other way to put it. He thought he was every woman's ideal and that no woman, no matter what class found him absolutely irresistible in every way. The truth of it was that the only women that sought after him were whores and women like Lanie who only wanted him for his money and even though that was most women in England Elizabeth certainly didn't care for him but she knew that she was the heir to the Wheaton wealth so she had to marry him to keep the life she had became accustomed to. Also, her father had become ill so to keep him happy she was willing to marry for riches not love. And oh, did she desire love but for her father she would give her life even though at times he can be harsh and cruel to her passions she understand that he only wants the best for his first-born daughter. 


	3. Chapter 2

Chapter 2  
  
The next morning she woke up after a long night of tears, tossing and turning and disturbing dreams of her father in Meadowbrook Farms interrupted any rest. The only peace she got was when she dreamt of her dreamy bloodsucker. Unfortunately, she awoke at dawn before she and her vampire could get to the "dissolute deed" but he did bite her and that part still wondered and confused Elizabeth.  
She brushed her long red hair and began to whistle a song, which her mother sang when she was a little girl. It was a song that went,  
  
Darkness is dreary  
Darkness is bleak  
But still things come out  
Of the shadows and creep  
They are sometimes angry  
They are sometimes mean  
  
They're just like people  
  
But they are not seen  
  
She played it many times in her head. All of a sudden, Rosemary rushed in carrying a blue dress with a matching corset, surprising Elizabeth.  
Rosemary was the lady-in-waiting in Elizabeth's and Sara's wing. She was also her mother's closest friend. Rosemary and her mother, Allison, went to grade school together and became instantly the best of friends. Rosemary was a plump woman with short brown hair and rich green eyes she was in her mid-40's, and never married. Rosemary has been a lady-in-waiting since she was 17 but she moved into the Wheaton Manor when Elizabeth's mother disappeared 10 years ago and she has been like a mother figure to the girls.  
Once Elizabeth retained her breath she said, "Rosemary you startled me, what do you want?" Rosemary shot Elizabeth a sarcastic look, which said, how dare you speak to me like that, because despite the fact that Rosemary was her lady-in-waiting Rosemary was still treated with respect in Elizabeth's book. Elizabeth gave apologetic glance.  
"Now, Lizzie..." Rosemary said in an unrefined voice, she was the only one allowed to call Elizabeth, Lizzie, "...it's already quarter past 10 and your due in the park in 30 minutes." She opened the drapes; Elizabeth shuddered at the pouring sunlight.  
"It's awfully bright out today..." Elizabeth exclaimed, "...can't I wear a hat, a big floppy one! Rosemary giggled quietly as she was sorting throughout Elizabeth's closet. She placed the biggest hat she could find on the bed and sighed at Elizabeth. It was green, which didn't match the dress she was going to wear, it had yellow flowers on it and it was 10 sizes too big for her petite cranium.  
"That's too small, it's bloody blazing out there!" shouted Elizabeth. She found herself very amusing during the morning madness and to her delight everyone else did too. Before she could recover from her laughter Sara had entered the room, fully dressed.  
"Would you look-ee here, already 10:20 in morning and Princess Punctual is not even dressed." She was referring to when she was 10 minutes late to her piano lesson and Elizabeth responded by punishing her for 2 whole days.  
"Get..go...leave..wha..." Elizabeth stammers being fairly surprised by Sara's entrance. "Go away, you make me absolutely bonkers!" Elizabeth said being very annoyed by her sister's presence.  
"Oh?" Sara asked Elizabeth just to annoy her. She walked over to the bed a positioned the big, floppy green hat on her head. The hat made her look the size of a pea, you could barely see her under the enormous rim. "I make you crazy, oh really, I think you drive yourself mad. Yes, I think you were nutty long before I came along."  
"Unlike your father before your mother." Whispered Rosemary. With all of their batter they hardly noticed that Rosemary was still in the room and even if they were conscious of her company the sentence she spoke still shocked them both. To say such a thing about their mother, her oldest friend, was a horrible thing to do. 


End file.
